manager

I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Ed Catmull called Creativity Inc. Now you may not be familiar with the name Ed Catmull, but if I tell you that he was one of the three original founders of Pixar film then you’ll probably have an idea of who I’m talking about.

In the book is a chapter where Catmull describes the process behind making a successful animation movie. Catmull writes “Early on all our movies suck!”. This makes sense when you think about it. But when we see that fabulous animation, we often forget how that represents three years of hard work from an awful lot of people. And of course that rough idea was not born a box office hit. It was worked, reworked and polished endlessly until it became that work of art.

One thing is being a lone genius, a Picasso or a Rodin – tirelessly and self critically continuing until you get it right. But how does that work when you are 60, 70 or even 200+ people?

According to Catmull, one of the secrets to Pixar’s success is that they have this culture of candour. A feedback culture that is open, straightforward and honest – and maybe most importantly, never compromising.

So once a month, the management team sit down with the team working on a given animation project for the monthly review. Imagine this is meeting #24 i.e. 24 months into the project. Probably still another 12 or 18 months to go. The team that has been working on the project has been working long and hard on it, and they are probably relatively proud of what they have come to see as their baby.

But there is still work to do. So the challenge for the management team is, to give the ‘creatives’ the necessary feedback without them losing motivation and enthusiasm. So each management team member voices their opinion but in a very precise format. They explain what they feel worked well for them and they state very clearly what did not work well for them. “If the scene at 37 minutes, was supposed to make me laugh, I didn’t find it funny.” The management team makes a point of not suggesting what needs to be fixed or what they felt was wrong. They only communicate very clearly: Is this working for me or is it not working for me?

And so it goes on and on, iteration after iteration, and gradually the rough sketches and crazy ideas are honed into one smooth and fabulous animation movie. Management gives straightforward no nonsense feedback – but the project managers are always left with their ownership for the project intact. They must come up with a new solution or improvement.

It’s not personal, it’s a challenge

Note also that this type of feedback is not personal. This is not feedback that says you are a bad animator. It just says we need to try something different. It’s a challenge, not a criticism.

But now think of your own team and how you are conducting team reviews, feedback sessions, evaluations of past performance? Do you have a culture of straight talk?

Do you as the boss fall into the trap of telling them what was wrong and what they need to do in order to fix it?

No feedback, no progress.

Feedback is crucial to our progress, without it we would not see improvements in anything we do. But the wrong kind of feedback, the criticisms, the ironic comments, sarcasm and lukewarm endorsements, just kills motivation and engagement.

In our ongoing summer series on how to best support the first time mangers, we now need to look at one of the big challenges – lack of time.

Landing that first managerial job is, for most new mangers, exciting and challenging: so much to do!

…and then the realisation: so little time to do it in.

The natural reaction is to just put in more hours. Crank up the work volume. And often it works for a while but then we run out of steam. Then in our pursuit to squeeze more productivity out of the hours available, we start researching time management tricks and tips – maybe we invest in a super To-do app for our phone or a fancy leather bound paper organisers.

But regardless, chasing more time quickly becomes exhausting.

There has got to be a better way.

There is.

But it is not about managing your time, but about managing your energy instead. When we are energised, we fly through the day – stuff seems to get done almost by itself – on the other hand, on the days when we are drained, even the simplest task seems to occupy the whole morning for us.

Where does our energy come from?

To some, it’s just a question of getting enough sleep and the right amount of caffeine in the morning – but it is actually more complex than that.

In the book “The Power of full engagement”, Tony Swartz explains that we draw our energy from four sources:

Body, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual.

Ideally, we need to manage them all to ‘Full’ in order to function at our best.

Body: physical energy

The basics are well known to most. You need your sleep and you need to eat in a sensible way. If you do not know what that means, there are lots of resources on the web to guide you – Google is a good place to start.

So assuming that you have the basics under control, you also need to manage your body energy over the day. This is less well known. You body is not a machine – if you don’t give it time to replenish and recover over the day, you wear it down in such a way that your productivity drops of dramatically as you move through the day. Ever notice a different in energy levels during the first hours of the morning and your 3pm drowsiness?

Every 90 min or so we need a break – a 15 min switch of, close your eyes, daydream or even better, take a brisk walk, whatever you can do to give your system a break from what you are doing.

If you apply these breaks every 90 min or so, you will experience that you can sustain the same high levels of physical energy throughout the day – afternoons become just as productive as mornings and thus make up for the time you ‘wasted’ taking these 15 min breaks.

Emotions: the quality of our energy

Maintaining a positive state of mind requires a conscious effort. The more pressure we face and the more fight-flight reactions we have during a day, the more we tend to slip into negative emotions. Being in a negative frame of mind reduces our effectiveness quite dramatically; we see problems where we need to see solutions and possibilities. And the negative impact is not limited to ourselves – negative emotions are contagious – they spread to our surroundings and make everyone else less effective as well. Apart from the fact that it ruins their day….

The two fastest ways to make a quick emotional reset when we sense that we are slipping into a negative state is to take a deep breath and exhale slowly – when we exhale slowly, we provide instant stress relief.

Secondly, we can shift our focus. Next time you are in a negative mood, notice where your focus is. You will be focusing on something that you don’t like or don’t want. When we do that, we trigger a negative emotional response. If we shift our focus to what we do want, what we could create, what would be a possibility then we also trigger a more positive emotional response – try it – it works wonders.

Negative emotions are like Tamagotchis, they need to be fed in order to persist. We can all experience burst of anger or frustration during a hectic day – that is unavoidable. Emotional bursts last on an average 90 sec if you just leave them to lose their steam. Only if you feed them with more negative thoughts do they survive for longer – Don’t feed them, shift your focus.

The Mind: Focus Energy

The fastest way to dilute your mental resources and energy is to shift tasks rapidly. In your brain, there is no such thing as multitasking, what we sometimes refer to as multitasking is just that we are asking our brains to perform several tasks at the same time by rapidly switching from one to the other – when we do that the loss in productivity is dramatic. Typically, you add an extra 25% time to tasks when you switch attention. So answering phone calls, replying to email, etc. while trying to finish that monthly report is a very bad idea.

Chunk and batch process your tasks in categories. Emails in one time slot, phone calls in another.

Big Rocks First

The number one productivity enhancer that everyone who implements it says changes their life dramatically is what Steven Covey called Big Rocks First: Start your day by tackling one big important project that you need to get done. (Decide the night before what it is going to be) Do it first, before the emails, and the 15 yellow post-it notes with things to do and people to call on them. Practice every day for a week and notice how much more you get done. It is amazing!

The Human Spirit: Energy of Meaning and Purpose.

How does it feel energy wise to work on something that in your view is meaningless? It’s a drag – yes?

On the other hand, how does it feel to work on something that you personally feel is ultra important and very meaningful? Now you are maybe thinking, but hey that’s not work, that’s called a hobby… Exactly. When something is meaningful to us – when we can see the purpose, it is so much more fun to do that we would even consider doing to for free.

So how do we tap into that energy?

We do so by becoming more aware about what is important to us. What we value in life. Becoming more aware of in what situation we have had this ‘flow’ experience and then asking ourselves so how can I organise myself in such a way that I get to do more of that.

Sometimes we are just in a situation that we will need to create our own meaning in order to survive. At the age of 21, I landed a job as a lift operator in a very posh Parisian hotel. Now that is not the most inspiring of jobs. So in order to preserve my sanity, I started to think what would it take to become the best lift operator in Paris? How do you run your lift in such a way that people (i.e my superiors) notice? That became my meaningful project every day and three months later, I was promoted to a new position in the hotel.

So in conclusion – and I do realise it is a bit of a cliché – but it really does apply here -Don’t try to work harder – you will just kill yourself – work smarter.

Take charge of your energy levels!

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This is the ninth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

Before you plunge into this, take a moment – and think about leaders that you have admired in your life. This could be a teacher, a scout leader, a sports coach or a boss. Go on – do it now.

When you think of a leader in your life that you have admired, does a specific conversation come to mind?

I think most of us can remember at least one (maybe even several) conversations that we have had with a great ‘boss’. A conversation that somehow shifted something in our thinking, understanding or behaviour.

Great conversations have a powerful impact.

But great conversations are also time consuming and for exactly that reason – they are also often the most neglected part of your leadership toolkit. We don’t seem to find the time.

That is a shame because when we neglect our conversations, we miss out on one of the most effective leadership instruments at our disposal.

Now, conversations are not just conversations, they come in many forms, some are constructive/destructive, important/irrelevant or inspiring/draining etc.

So as a first time leader, the first step is to become more aware of our conversations and in that process look at:

The quality

The participants

The frequency

What is a Quality Conversation?

Most conversations can be categorized as anything from weak at one end of the spectrum to strong at the other end.

A strong conversation has three key ingredients:

Advancement of an agenda

Shared learning

A strengthening of the relationship

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the weak conversations. At best they lead nowhere. And at worst, they produce confusion and distrust.

A high-quality conversation typically has three stages:

The initiator of the conversation sets up her agenda with an honest feeling or sincere expression of need. This signals to the other participant(s) in the conversation the importance of the agenda. At the same time, it can also a request for help and an invitation to contribution.

Strong conversations often follow a natural path of divergences / convergence that goes something like this:

In the first phase, you establish rapport and set the scene.

You ‘frame’ the situation, explain your view and if possible, illustrate what you mean.

The second phase, you explore, primarily using questions. You are probing in an effort to uncover and surface the real assumptions behind the issue as well as to make sure that we have as many facts as possible on the table.

Once we have a common understanding of what is going on, we can move to a third phase where we examine alternative ideas and solutions. This is a phase where we can try and stretch our thinking and not fall into the trap of grabbing the first solution that surfaces.

Finally, we need to make choices and decide what actions to take. This is a critical phase because often we assume that everybody is in agreement about what it is we need to do and everybody sees everything the same way and therefore there’s no need to going to details about this. (and time is running so we all nod and grab our stuff and rush of to the next thing on our agenda.)

But more often than not, this is not the case. We all hear what we would like to hear and we can all fall into the trap of going with half baked inferences and assumptions.

So in the final phase of a great conversation, we agree on explicit action steps: Who does what and when.

In order to move elegantly through this diamond, it is helpful to learn certain communicative dance steps. We call them advocacy and inquiry. We can get back to them in a future post.

Who are you talking to?

The next thing I would like you to consider is who are you actually having conversations with?

Take a moment and think about the week that has passed. Who did you talk to beyond just “So how are you?” or “Did you watch football yesterday?” etc.,

What quality conversations have you had and with whom?

And maybe even more importantly, who did you not have conversations with?

Why do you think you did not have conversations with exactly those people? Often our most immediate answer to that is “No time” or “They weren’t available.” or something else in that category. But often these are just excuses.

When we explore this question deeper, we often realise that there are some people we have a tendency to avoid having real conversations with. There can be many reasons for this, from simply we just don’t really enjoy those people, or that those conversations always end up negatively, or that we know that we have disagreements that we don’t want to resurface.

But also, be aware if there are people that you’re not having conversations with because you are assuming that it’s not necessary. “They know where to find me, they are capable and will tell me if they need me.” etc. That may be true but my suggestion is to test your own assumption on this. You might be surprised.

Whatever the reason is for avoidance, it should be a big red flag waving in front of you telling you something needs sorting out.

Because having or not having conversations and with whom is part of your behaviour pattern – see my previous post and it sends strong implicit signals about what you are interested in/ focused on.

How often are you having quality conversations?

The next thing to consider when you look at the people that you are responsible for is to evaluate the frequency with which you have powerful conversations with them.

Look at the list of the people on your team and think through how often do you actually sit down with them and have a powerful conversation?

Are you happy with this frequency? What do you think would happen if you increased the frequency for all or some of them?

If you think back to the first post in this series on Action, Behaviours and Conversations, we looked at the concept of powerful and powerless. That applies here as well. Powerless leaders have weak wichy washy conversations – powerful leaders have strong engaging conversations.

Generally, there is a huge need for more real conversations out there, not less. Quality conversations are the glue of our relationships, they are highly motivating – and they generate trust.

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This is the eighth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

Last week, we looked at the first of three essential tools that are at your disposal as a first time manager. We looked at how action and non action ends up defining you as either powerful (in the positive constructive sense) or powerless.

Now it’s time to look at the next key instrument – your behaviour.

When I work with young managers who are in their first leadership position, I always give them a brief talk about being ‘on stage’.

And goes something like this:

The moment you become a leader of any kind, you are on stage 24/7 – what I mean by that is that everything you say and do is registered, compared and interpreted by your followers.

The way you get out of your car on the car park in the morning, how you walk across the parking lot, what you say as you come in through the door, who you talk to first and who you don’t talk to … on and on it goes throughout the day.

It’s as if you have a GoPro camera mounted on a rod on your back and it is registering your every move.

Each person on your team makes their own video – each from their perspective and as they are not ‘inside you head’ at any given moment, they don’t have enough information to understand what is going on – so they fill in the blanks as best they can.

They interpret what they observe and from that they make their own assumptions and with that a story.

As you got out of your car, you had a deep frown on you brow (you were thinking about your 5 year old and her bad cough in the night) but your followers may say to themselves: “Oh she is still pissed off about that incident yesterday” – even though the last thing you said as you left the day before was: “ Ok – let’s forget about this and move on”.

It is not what you say that counts, but your behaviour, and as each of your followers has only part of the story, they compare notes at the water cooler, over lunch or whatever and see if they can make up a complete story between them. A story that helps them predict the future. Because essentially that is what they are trying to do.

Don’t believe me? Well just think of the ways you observe your own boss…

You are the role model.

If you have had the experience of bringing up children, I am sure you will recall a time when you overheard your 3 or 4 year old suddenly trot out a sentence to her favourite doll or best friend and you realised that it was a word perfect recording of something you had said to your child in another situation.

If you have, you have probably also had the two following reactions. First, you find it hilariously funny, then you have this chilling realisation that this is what you sound like to your 4 year old… and you are possibly less thrilled.

As a parent, you are the role model as you are the role model when you are the leader. What you do gets registered and copied.

So as a leader, you need to be aware that every little thing you do gets interpreted and that there is never a period where you can claim a time out. At any given moment 24/7, you are communicating and there is no “off” button.

The only way you diminish their need for interpretation and story making is to be very aware of your behaviour and very clear and transparent in your communication. (We will look at the verbal communication part next week) You will need to leave as little as possible to their interpretations and imagination.

So how do you do that?

It’s all about being clear and consistent.

Some leaders try the joke about don’t do as I do, just do as I say. It may be funny but it does not work.

It very simple: What you focus on is what is important in their eyes – what you are not focused on is judged to be of less importance.

And your behaviour, not your words, shows them what is really important.

So what are you paying attention too? Whom do you speak to? What questions are you asking? What do you follow up? What do you ignore?

It is all observed and registered.

I was once coaching a reception manger from a large hotel and she told me that she has trouble getting her team to understand that they must take their lunch break, in peace, and in the canteen – because it was important that they get the break and anyway it is not appropriate to snack at their desks.

But no matter what, she would keep catching them taking their plate into their desk and having it next to their computer. So she wanted me to help her work out what sort of punishment would work to make them stop. Instead, I asked her: “So where do you have your lunch?” she said :“Well you see, I don’t really have lunch – I just bring some fruits, nuts or a carrot and have them during the day – you see, I am too busy most days…”

No matter what she says, it will always be overruled by her own behaviour. And nothing will change until the day she changes her behaviour.

So what are you paying attention to?

Whom do you speak to?

What questions are you asking?

What do you follow up? What do you ignore?

How do you come in to work in the morning?

Whatever is important to you is important to them – and from their perspective, if you, their busy boss, pay attention to something, it must be because it is important – that is the cue that they take from you.

Oh and never forget as Steven Covey said: You can’t talk your way out of something you behave yourself into – you have to behave yourself out of it.

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This is the seventh article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

Last week, we looked at the importance of building relations as a basic skill for the first time manager.

Essentially, you are the instrument. How you decide to show up from situation to situation will determine how your relationships with other people are formed.

As the ‘instrument’, you will need to be aware of three things: Your actions, behaviours and conversations. How you decide to mix and match these three will, at the end of the day, determine how successful you end up being in your roles as a first time manager (or in any future management position for that matter).

This week, we explore the first of these three key tools.

What you decide to do – or not to do – defines you in your managerial role.

Leaders who come across as trustworthy and powerful in the best sense of the word are the people whom you know you can trust to act on something when it is brought to their attention. They are in my view the powerful leaders.

Some people have a problem with the words power and powerful. In some cultures, it has negative connotations – and there are often good reasons for that because we have all experienced powerful leaders who abused their power.

In his book Power and Love, which I can highly recommend, Adam Kahane defines two kinds of power: constructive and destructive. He explains the difference as:

‘Power over’ – which is the destructive version.

‘Power to’ – which is the constructive version.

When as a leader I use my power as ‘power over’, it is not very engaging – on the contrary nobody feels inspired by being subjected to ‘power over’ – power over is encapsulated in the response: “Because I say so!” to an inquiry from a team member asking: “ why we are doing this?” .

It is a classic beginner’s error for new manager to get this wrong and to try and bolster their position by demonstrating ‘power over’ instead of focusing on ‘power to’. This form of power shows up when you order people around, grant or don’t grant favour, privileges to team members etc. These are all actions that use to demonstrate ‘I am in charge here’.

‘Power to’ on the other hand is when you use your skills, position and authority to change or create something, to move the agenda forward. You are comfortable distributing power to other team members; it’s all about getting things done and moving the agenda forward.

Leaders who display that kind of power are a joy to work for in contrast to the ones that are powerless because they do not take action but always postpone, hesitate or kick issues upstairs – to the side.

Non-action is also action

In my view, the core problem with people in charge at any level in an organisation, who are not seen as great leaders by their surroundings, is not so much that they do the wrong things but that they are not doing the things that they obviously should be doing.

These indecisions come in all shapes and sizes – from small stuff like: “Would it be possible for me to take 2 days off next month to go to my sister’s wedding…?” and then you wait and you wait and you wait for an answer and maybe you even remind them more than once and get: “Oh yes, so sorry I will look into it…” Or more serious issues like, “We have a customer who is very upset with our last delivery on the phone.” There is a world of difference between the leader who says “Let me speak to her now”, and the one that says “I am busy just now, tell her I will call her back” and you think: “That is what she said last week…”

The worst form of non-action that I know is the manager who does not respond to non-performance. It is in my opinion probably the most destructive form of non action that there is.

Think about it – what is the worst way to insult a high performing employee? – It is to ask them to work alongside an idiot. If you are a highly engaged employee and take pride in your job, nothing ruins your motivation and engagement as much as watching someone work alongside you that makes a mess of the product, the customer relation or whatever. Someone who ultimately does not care the way you care.

The powerless manager will come up with excuses – “Yes, I know Joe is not quite up to snuff but that is all we can get just now, so please suffer him for now and we will get it sorted out eventually.” – but they seldom do. Because if someone is not doing what they are supposed to be doing, it is time for a powerful conversation – and there is no reason to postpone it.

Everyone on your team needs to know that if things are not going according to plan, you will act – not as tyrant spewing blame all over the show – but you will act because you care and you will sort it out – you will be asking questions, trying to understand why we are not on track and then you will take appropriate action.

Why can it be hard to take action – well you could take the wrong action and stand there with egg all over you face. So non action is often a result of a fear of being wrong. But as leaders, we need to get over the fear of being wrong. We will be wrong from time to time and that is not a problem as long as we acknowledge it and try to improve. Perfect leaders do not exist.

Think about it, whom would you personally prefer to work for, the leader who acts and makes mistake – and is prepared to acknowledge them, or the leader who does not act but also never seems to do wrong because they push those decisions up the system instead of taking responsibility for their own actions?

Next week, we will look more closely at the second tool at your disposal – your behaviour.

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This is the sixth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

The second step in that process – the who part – is all about relations.

Daniel H. Kim the systems thinker has illustrated this in a very elegant way.

So we have a fundamental choice here. And it can go one of two ways.

We can generate an upward spiral where we are continuously developing our relations and, as a result, performing better and better; or we can take the downward spiral where it all just gets worse and worse.

It is a choice.

A choice that is going to determine whether the team is going to be successful or not and, ultimately, it’s going to determine whether you are successful in your role as a team leader.

For the first time manager, this sometimes comes as a surprise and we think, “I have a gazillion other things to do. Do I also have to think about that, I just want to get the job done?”

And the next thought is maybe, ‘but what do we mean by relations exactly?’. This is where the first time manger can make a classical and very costly mistake.

Relationship is not about trying to please everyone. A relationship is about mutual expectations and that is something very different.

I like Ed Schein’s definition of a relationship:

“A relationship is a set of mutual expectations about each other’s future behaviour based on past interactions with each other.”

So you have a relationship with someone when you can more or less predict some of their behaviours and vice versa. Relationships go both ways, otherwise they are not relationships.

But we have relationships of different depths with other people. They can be shallow, meaning that both of us have a vague sense of what the other person will do; or at the other end of the spectrum, they can be deep to the extent that we almost know what the other person thinks and feels in most situations.

A good, solid work relationship means that we feel a certain level of comfort with each other, we have a good understanding of how the other will react and we are well aligned with respect to whatever goal or project we are working on.

That kind of comfortable relationship we often summarise in one small word: trust.

But in order for me to determine how much to trust you and how open I can expect you to be with me, we must have a history.

We judge our relationships on past interactions, and we are usually very observant of these first interactions because we use them as a test – and the result of the test feed into our conclusions on how this relationship works.

In practical terms, this means that as a first time manager, you will need to invest time and effort in building these relationships. And when doing so, you have three basic tools at your disposal:

Your actions, your behaviours and your conversations.

In our next post, we will look closer at these three relationship building instruments.

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This is the fifth article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series: